A magnetic component often includes a winding and a magnetic core. Magnetic components are essential power electronic components used in various applications including energy storage, energy conversion, and electrical isolation applications. They are necessary for a large number of power supply circuits. As such, magnetic components are some of the most important components in the field of power electronics technologies.
Magnetic components mainly fall into two general categories: transformers and inductors. For instance, in an LED power supply, the necessary magnetic components may include a transformer, a common mode inductor, and a power inductor, etc. The LED power supplies require high quality magnetic components in comparison to conventional power supplies. For example, LED lights have relatively high working temperatures. The LED power supplies require the magnetic components used, such as transformers and inductors, to be small, reliable, stable, and with little power loss. In order to meet these requirements, it is important to optimize the magnetic core used in the LED power supplies to improve the power density and other characteristics of the components.
PCB integrated magnetic components can be divided into two categories: the coreless PCB components and the PCB components with a core. A coreless PCB transformer is often used in power circuits such as a power switch. Because it has relatively low power, in order to achieve high inductance, a coreless PCB transformer requires a larger number of winding turns. However, more winding turns would increase the resistance, and affect the efficiency of the component. Thus, in power PCB magnetic components, magnetic core is widely used to increase the induction density. For example, many of the state-of-the-art PCB magnetic components use ferrite magnetic materials for the core. Because ferrite magnetic materials have low permeability and magnetic induction density at operating points, using ferrite magnetic materials may not fully realize the advantages of the PCB magnetic components such as the small size and high power density.
With the development of magnetic material technologies, various magnetic materials appear to have better characteristics. For example, a magnetic thin film is a material with valuable characteristics such as high saturation magnetic flux density, low coercivity, high resistivity, and so on. The thin film material is often used for integrating inductor onto silicon chips. However, because of the limitations of the micro-fabrication technologies, the deposition method for manufacturing thin film materials is limited to micro-fabrication techniques, such as electroplating and sputtering methods. The electroplating method may manufacture materials with relatively low resistivity, but the thickness of usable magnetic material part may be very limited because of the “skin effect.” On the other hand, the sputtering method may manufacture materials not affected by resistivity, but the deposition process may be slow and costly.
The disclosed method and system are directed to solve one or more problems set forth above and other problems.